“It looks bad, you know, but it is not really serious, it is only a symptom, not a disease. All you have to do is to keep very quiet. The doctor will soon be here.”
“I’m not frightened.”
“Hush! I’m sure you are not.”
A hot bottle to my feet, little lumps of ice to suck; loose warm covering adjusted round me quickly, the blinds pulled up, and the window opened, there was nothing of which she did not think. And the little she said was all in the right key, not making light of my trouble, but explaining, minimizing it, helping me to calm my disordered nerves.
“I would give you a morphia injection only that Dr. Kennedy will be here any moment now.”
I don’t think it could have been long after that before he was in the room. In the meantime I was hating the sight of my own blood and kept begging the nurses or signing to them to remove basins and stained clothes.
Nurse Benham told him very quietly what had happened. He was looking at me and said encouragingly:
“You will soon be all right.”
I was still coughing up blood and did not feel reassured. I heard him ask for hot water. Nurse and he were at the chest of drawers, whispering over something that might be cooking operations. Then nurse came back to the bed.
“Dr. Kennedy is going to give you a morphia injection that will stop the hæmorrhage at once.”
She rolled up the sleeve of my nightgown, and I saw he was beside her.
“How much?” I got out.
“A quarter of a grain,” he answered quietly. “You’ll find it will be quite enough. If not, you can have another.”
I resented the prick of the needle, and that having hurt me he should rub the place with his finger, making it worse, I thought. I got reconciled to it however, and his presence there, very soon. He was still in tweeds and they smelt of gorse or peat, of something pleasant.
“Getting better?”
There was no doubt the hæmorrhage was coming to an end, and I was no longer shivering and apprehensive. He felt my pulse and said it was “very good.”
“The usual cackle!” I was able to smile.
“I shouldn’t talk if I were you.” He smiled too. “You will be quite comfortable in half an hour.”
“I am not uncomfortable now.” He laughed, a low and pleasant laugh.
“She is wonderful, isn’t she?” he said to Benham. Benham was clearing away every evidence of what had occurred, and I felt how competent they both were, and again that I was in good hands. I was glad Ella was asleep and knew nothing of what was happening.
Dr. Kennedy was over at the chest of drawers again.
“I’ll leave you another dose,” he said, and they talked together. Then he came to say “good-bye” to me.
“Can’t I sleep by myself? I hate any one in the room with me.” I wanted to add, “it spoils my dreams,” but am not sure if I actually said the words.
“You’ll find you will be all right, as right as rain. Nurse will fix you up. All you have to do is to go to sleep. If not she will give you another dose. I’ve left it measured out. You are not afraid, are you?”
“No.”
“The good dreams will come. I am willing them to you.” I found it difficult to concentrate.
“What did you promise me before?”
“Nothing I shan’t perform. Good-night. …”
He went away quickly.
I was wider awake than I wished to be, and soon a desire for action was racing in my disordered mind. I thought the hæmorrhage meant death, and I had left so many things undone. I could not recollect the provisions of my will, and felt sure it was unjust. I could have been kinder to so many people, the dead as well as the living. It is so easy to say sharp, clever things; so difficult to unsay them. I remembered one particular act of unkindness … even now I cannot bear to recall it. Alas! it was to one now dead. And Ella, Ella did not know I returned her love, full measure, pressed down, brimming over. Once, very many years ago, when she was in need and I supposed to be rich, she asked me to lend her five hundred pounds. Because I hadn’t it, and was too proud to say so, I was ruder to her than seems possible now, asking why I should work to supply her extravagances. But she was never extravagant, except in giving. Oh, God! That five hundred pounds! How many times I have thought of it. What would I not give not to have said no, to have humbled my pride, admitted I could not put my hands on so large a sum? Now she lavishes her all on me. And if it were true that I was dying, already I was not sure, she would be lonely in her world. Without each other we were always lonely. Love of sisters is unlike all other love. We had slept in each other’s bed from babyhood onward, told each other all our little secrets, been banded together against nurses and governesses, maintained our intimacy in changed and changing circumstances, through long and varied years. Ella would be lonely when I was dead. A hot tear or two oozed through my closed lids when I thought of Ella’s loneliness without me. I wiped those tears away feebly with the sheet. The room was very strange and quiet, not quite steady when I opened my eyes. So I shut them. The morphia was beginning to act.
“Why are you crying?”
“How could you see me over there?” But I no longer wanted to cry and I had forgotten Ella. I opened my eyes when she spoke. The fire was low and the room dark, quite steady and ordinary. Margaret was sitting by the fireside, and I saw her more clearly than I had ever seen her before, a pale, clever, whimsical face, thin-featured and mobile, with grey eyes.
“It is absurd to cry,” she said. “When I finished crying there were no tears in the world to shed. All the grief, all the unhappiness died with me.”
“Why were you so unhappy?” I asked.
“Because I was a fool,” she answered. “When you tell my story you must do it as sympathetically as possible, make people sorry for me. But that is the truth. I was unhappy because I was a fool.”
“You still think I shall write your story. The critics will be pleased. …” I began to remember all they would say, the flattering notices.
“Why were you crying?” she persisted. “Are you a fool too?”
“No. Only on Ella’s account I don’t want to die.”
“You need not fear. Is Ella some one who loves you? If so she will keep you here. Gabriel did not love me enough. If some one needs us desperately and loves us completely, we don’t die.”
“Did no one love you like that?”
“I died,” she answered concisely, and then gazed into the fire.
My limbs relaxed, I felt drowsy and convinced of great talent. I had never done myself justice, but with this story of Margaret Capel’s I should come into my own. I wrote the opening sentence, a splendid sentence, arresting. And then I went on easily. I, who always wrote with infinite difficulty, slowly, and trying each phrase over again, weighing and appraising it, now found an amazing fluency come to me. I wrote and wrote.
De Quincey has not spoken the last word on morphia dreams. It is only a pity he spoke so well that lesser writers are chary of giving their experiences. The next few days, as I heard afterwards, I lay between life and death, the temperature never below 102 and the hæmorrhage recurring. I only know that they were calm and happy days. Ella was there and we understood each other perfectly, without words. The nurses came and went,